Keep your product moving with a part-time technical lead.

I'm James Elkins. I help software companies take responsibility for technical direction and delivery when they need senior engineering leadership on a part-time basis.

If your lead engineer has left, your product is stuck, or important technical decisions keep landing on your desk, I can work with you and your team to decide what comes next and deliver it.

Technical leadership, or a defined starting point.

Ongoing · part-time · monthly retainer

Fractional CTO

Someone to own the engineering plan, architecture, and delivery.

For post-revenue B2B software companies that need a senior technical lead without making a full-time hire. Typically, founder-led teams of roughly 5–30 people.

I work with the founder and engineers to:

  • Decide what to build next and what to stop building.
  • Make architecture decisions and review code and technical hiring.
  • Work through releases and production problems with the team.

The monthly retainer is scoped by time commitment. We agree on responsibilities, fees, and notice terms in writing before work starts.

Discuss a fractional CTO engagement

AI enablement sprint · 2 weeks · fixed fee

AI workflow assessment

Work out where AI is worth using before you commit to building.

For teams with a recurring manual workflow, such as claims follow-up, document preparation, or reconciliation, that want a clear assessment of where AI could help.

I examine the workflow with the people who run it. You receive:

  • A map of the steps, data, handoffs, and failure points.
  • Prioritized agent use cases, including risks and human-review points.
  • A recommendation on what to build, buy, or keep manual.

The sprint is an assessment. Prototyping and implementation are separate follow-on work, scoped if needed. You can use the recommendation with your existing team or discuss further work with me.

Discuss a workflow assessment

Both engagements are quoted before work starts. All fees in USD. See engagement terms and pricing.

TaxWeave

Tax practice software · engineering

Bringing client email, documents, and workpapers into one review flow.

CPA firms track client work across email inboxes, file stores, and workpaper files, with the accountant reviewing the work before it goes out.

I work on engineering across that flow, including email ingestion and filing, document access, and workpaper preparation, keeping the accountant's review central.

Work is ongoing.

Autonomy Health

Healthcare · prior-authorization platform

Owning integration surfaces for prior authorizations.

The platform moves prior authorizations from order to approval across eligibility, benefits, submission, and exception paths, writing results back into the EMR where clinical staff work.

I owned engineering across the external-integration surface: the authorization workflow and routing, eligibility and payer modeling, payer-submission lanes including browser automation and direct EMR reads, operator tooling for stuck states, and reliability and privacy controls.

Year-long engagement covering greenfield lanes, hardening, and go-live correctness work.

Recruiting client

Recruiting software · engineering

Candidate search, rosters, and resume content in one platform.

Recruiters work through candidate pipelines for company positions, searching across people, notes, resumes, and roster activity.

I work on engineering across search and data paths, including resume parsing and search, filter reliability, and background-job and deployment hardening.

Work is ongoing; client confidential.

Additional experience

UmiLab

Claims-status and eligibility workflow for revenue-cycle teams, connecting spreadsheet upload, payer checks, status categorization, and export.

Modern Treasury

Payment operations software for businesses; past work as Engineering Manager across Growth and Professional Services engineering teams.

Magic Sticker Printer

Independent iOS product turning spoken descriptions into AI-generated images printed on compatible Niimbot thermal printers.

You work directly with me.

I'm an independent engineering consultant and a former Engineering Manager at Modern Treasury.

My work spans engineering leadership, architecture, code review, releases, and production problems. I also build and ship my own software.

What needs technical ownership?

Send me a short description of your company, the product or workflow, and where you're stuck. You don't need to arrive with a technical specification.

We'll have a scoping conversation, then agree on a written quote before work starts.

[email protected]

If you're unsure which engagement fits, describe the problem and we'll start there.